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Jonathan Bate

May 28 2008, 1:00am, The Times

On the whole this would seem to be a good thing. The comparison is perfectly apposite. The thing about Sir Walter Raleigh is that he really was the celebrity lyrical poet of the age. His poems were written as songs or to be read aloud.

Some of the characters in Shakespeare quote odd lines from Raleigh poems. We now think Raleigh and Shakespeare are in a category of literature that’s completely above pop music, but no authors at the time knew their work would last.

It takes time to find out what is going to endure. Who knows whether Amy Winehouse won’t be looked at in 50 or 100 years as one of the great lyricists of our time? We just don’t know. There is…

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